title: Thoughts about conceptual models, theories, and literature reviews.
abstract: This essay focuses on various types of literature reviews, including scoping reviews, realist reviews, and integrative reviews. As contributions to understanding the state of nursing science about a particular topic, each literature review should be but rarely is guided by a nursing conceptual model, and the research findings should be but rarely are interpreted as theories that were generated or tested. Examples that are exceptions to usual literature reviews are given.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nursing, University of Massachusetts Boston, ME 02125-3393, USA. jacqueline.fawcett@umb.edu
authors.forename: Jacqueline
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Fawcett
mesh_terms: D008962:Models, Theoretical; D012196:Review Literature as Topic
keywords: conceptual models; literature review; nursing theories